Speakers

Dr Elaine Seasly is the Deputy Planetary Protection Officer for NASA, which is to say she is a real-life Guardian of the Galaxy. Her focus is to ensure spacecraft is clean enough to visit other worlds when searching for life or signs of past life, and any material samples brought back from visits to other worlds do not pose a risk to life on Earth.

She began her career in contamination control at Raytheon Missile Systems and later transitioned to NASA to lead the Contamination Control and Planetary Protection efforts at NASA Langley Research Center.

Currently, at NASA Headquarters, she brings the systems engineering perspective to the Office of Planetary Protection. She is a proud engineering nerd, with a Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering, a Master’s in Patent Law, and a Doctor of Engineering degree.

Kevin Greenfield is the Deputy Comptroller for Operational Risk at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).

In this role, Mr. Greenfield oversees development of policy and examination procedures addressing operational risk, bank information technology, cybersecurity, critical infrastructure resilience, payments systems, and corporate and risk governance. He assumed these responsibilities in November 2019.

Prior to this role, Mr. Greenfield served as the Director for Bank Information Technology for the Operational Risk Division where he managed a team responsible for developing, communicating, and interpreting policies for the OCC's supervision of technology operations at financial institutions. He represented the OCC on several interagency groups that focus on coordination and development of information technology risk management supervisory guidance for such topics as information security, resiliency, technology operations, corporate governance, and independent risk management.

Prior to being named Director for Bank Information Technology in 2014, Mr. Greenfield spent 14 years with the OCC's Large Bank Supervision Department, where he gained experience examining large and complex technology operations at several of the largest U.S. financial institutions. In this role, he held various technology supervision roles at large financial institutions based in Pittsburgh, Charlotte, and New York City.

Mr. Greenfield is a graduate of the University of Dayton and holds the Certified Information Systems Auditor professional certification.

Rich Dutton is the Head of Machine Learning for Corporate Engineering at Google, where he leads a team of 15 engineers and data scientists across NYC and Austin.

Prior to this role, Rich was a tech lead in Bigtable at Google following a 15-year career working in data and analytics across both tech and finance in the US (New York and Seattle), Europe and Asia.

When not working, Rich practices Muay Thai and spends time with his family, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, including his Mini Australian Shepherd, Radia, and his self-driving car, Trinity.

Arthur Lindo (Art) is the Deputy Director for Policy in the Federal Reserve Board's Division of Supervision and Regulation. His principal responsibilities include overseeing the development and assessment of the effectiveness of Board regulations and policies affecting the financial services sector and coordinating the Board’s domestic and international regulatory programs. He also advises the Board on emerging policy matters that have implications for the supervision and regulation of the financial services sector. He is an active participant in various committees in the Federal Reserve System and is the Chairman of the Appraisal Subcommittee of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) and the Chairman of the Basel Committee’s Operational Resiliency Working Group. Art has a BA in Accounting from the Catholic University of America and a MBA in Finance from the George Washington University.

Lazaro Barreiro is the Director for Governance and Operational Risk Policy within the Operational Risk Policy Division at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). In this role, Mr Barreiro manages a team responsible for establishing governance and operational risk policy and guidance for the agency. He assumed these duties in 2016.

Prior to his current role, Mr Barreiro served as an Assistant Deputy Comptroller for the OCC's Pittsburgh Field Office. He has more than 31 years of financial services examination experience with the OCC, the former Office of Thrift Supervision, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mr Barreiro holds a bachelor's degree in finance from Florida State University and a master's in business administration in information technology from Barry University.

As Head of Operational Risk Management for AIG Investments, Finance, Tax & Treasury, Dolores (Lori) Miller executes all elements of AIG’s operational risk framework.    Lori and her team work with AIG business heads on effective risk assessment and mitigation, and evaluate complex transactions and new products as part of AIG’s new product approval process.   Relying on her background as a fixed-income portfolio manager and trader, Lori brings a practical framework and execution experience to enhance the risk & control environment, and serves as leader in risk management for AIG.  Lori manages a global team across seven office locations, bringing together operational risk, model risk, business continuity, and technology risk management in a cohesive approach.

Lori has a BSBA in Finance and her MBA in Finance from The Ohio State University, and her CPA and CFA designations.

Rick is a Senior Bank Examiner. He joined the Operational Risk Governance unit at the New York Fed in December, 2011 in the Financial Institutions Supervisory Group (FISG).

Rick began his career as a municipal finance attorney, then joined J.P. Morgan & Co., where played a variety of roles in markets and investment banking. In the late 1990s, Rick joined J.P. Morgan's original operational risk development team. There, he was responsible for framework development tasks and loss data collection and reporting systems. While at J.P. Morgan, Rick chaired the IIF subcommittee that drafted the finance industry's recommendations for Basel II event type categories, and later participated in the definition of loss data recording standards for the Operational Risk data eXchange (ORX). Before joining the Fed, Rick was an operational risk framework consultant for RiskBusiness International, designing customized taxonomic models and structured risk management programs for institutional clients.

Rick has been a writer, speaker and business school instructor on operational risk topics. He received a B.A. (Economics) and M.A. (Organizational Behavior) from Yale University, and a J.D. from University of Connecticut School of Law (Law Review, lead articles editor).

Michael J. Abriatis serves as PNC's Chief Operational Risk Officer. His is responsible for leading the PNC Operational Risk program. This includes both defining and implementing the PNC's Operational Risk program as well performing independent risk management activities.

He previously served as Chief Operating Officer for Corporate and Institutional Banking. In this role he was responsible for building the C&IB Business Risk Office as well as client analytics, communications, sales reporting, Canada Branch oversight, continuous improvement projects, and client experience initiatives.

Abriatis joined PNC in 2003 and has held numerous positions across PNC. Previous positions include Sr. Basel Program Manager, CFO Corporate Banking, CFO Wholesale Bank (National City Bank), Sr. Sourcing Manager and Business Improvement Consultant.

Michael has an undergraduate degree from Washington & Jefferson College and a MBA from Case Western Reserve's Weatherhead School of Business.

 

Jay Newberry has over thirty years of experience in risk management. 

Currently, he is engaged as Principal, Greenwich Risk Management Consulting, focused on Enterprise Risk Management and Operational Risk Management in the financial services industry.

Recently, Jay also served as an adjunct Lecturer in the Enterprise Risk Management Program at Columbia University teaching courses in Operational Risk Management, and Traditional Risk and ERM Practices.

Jay retired from Citigroup where he was responsible for the global Operational Risk Policy and Framework for identifying, assessing, monitoring, and communicating operational risk and the overall effectiveness of the control environment.

His responsibilities included standards for Risk Identification and Monitoring, spanning risk appetite, key operational risks and key indicators, and concentration risk.  He was also responsible for standards for Scenario Analysis and related stress loss forecasting processes.

In addition, Jay established and oversaw the independent verification processes for operational risk covering Basel AMA and CCAR and has facilitated a number of key global operational risk management governance committees.

Jay led U.S. regulatory relations for operational risk and partnered across Citi on global regulatory matters.

In his most recent role, he had responsibility for developing Citi’s Lessons Learned Policy and program, spanning all risk types.

Jay’s prior experience at Citi included leadership positions in developing and executing credit risk analytics, portfolio derivatives, risk capital, and credit portfolio management tools.  He began his banking career as Senior Analyst in Citi’s Corporate Finance Analysis Department where he engaged in marketing initiatives and credit approvals for the large corporate market.

Jay earned his BA degree in Economics from Middlebury College and his MBA from the Tuck School at Dartmouth.

 

Professor Berner served as the first director of the Office of Financial Research (OFR) from 2013 until 2017. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 established the OFR to support the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the Council’s member organizations and the public. The OFR’s mission is to promote financial stability by delivering high-quality financial data, standards and analysis.

He was counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury from April 2011 to 2013. His principal responsibilities included advising the Secretary on financial and regulatory issues and starting up the Office of Financial Research.

Professor Berner was a managing director, chief US economist at Morgan Stanley from 1999 to 2011 and co-head of Global Economics from 2008 to 2011.

He was executive vice president and chief economist at Mellon Bank, and a member of Mellon's Senior Management Committee (1992-99). Previously, he served as a principal and senior economist for Morgan Stanley, as a director and senior economist for Salomon Brothers (1985-91), as economist for Morgan Guaranty Trust Company (1982-85) and as director of the Washington, DC, office of Wharton Econometrics (1980-82).

Professor Berner served on the research staff of the Federal Reserve in Washington, where he co-directed the Fed’s model-based forecast and was a member of the team that developed the Fed’s first multi-country model used for international policy analysis (1972-80). He has been an adjunct professor of economics at Carnegie-Mellon University and at George Washington University.

He is an advisor to FinRegLab, an innovation center that tests new technologies and data to inform public policy and promote a responsible and inclusive financial marketplace. He is a member of the Milken Fintech initiative, led by former OCC head Tom Curry and former Treasury official Melissa Koide. He is a senior advisor to MacroPolicy Perspectives, an economic consulting firm. He is a member of the Board of Advisors of HData, which helps data companies involved in RegTech and Legal Tech solutions. He is a member of the IMF panel of experts for financial stability.

Professor Berner has been a member of the Economic Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a member of the Panel of Economic Advisers of the Congressional Budget Office, a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the Advisory Committee of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Department of Commerce, a member of the Board of Directors of the Penn Institute for Economic Research and a member of the Board of Advisors of Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC. He served as an associate for the Counterparty Risk Management Policy Group II. He is a Past President and Fellow of the National Association for Business Economics and is the past chair of the Economic Advisory Panel of the Bond Market Association. He is the winner of forecasting awards from Market News and the National Association for Business Economics, the 2007 recipient of the William Butler Award for Excellence in Business Economics and has been a member of Time’s Board of Economists.

He received his bachelor’s degree magna cum laude in Economics from Harvard College in 1968, and his PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1976. He researched his dissertation under the supervision of Professor Lawrence Klein, and was funded by SSRC-Ford Foundation grants at both the University of Louvain, Belgium, and at the University of Bologna, Italy, from 1971-72.

Rajat Baijal is the Head of Enterprise Risk at the Northview Group. In this role, he is responsible for designing and embedding a robust Risk Framework across the firm. This includes articulating and implementing a robust Risk & Control Self-Assessment (RCSA), Risk Event Management, Key Risk Indicators etc. and ensuring that the Board is suitably informed about all material issues. Rajat has an MBA in Finance and has previously worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, Lloyds Banking Group and Aviva specialising in global implementation of their Risk Framework. Rajat is a regular speaker at risk conferences across London and New York and has authored a number of articles for risk journals/textbooks.

Senior Executive practiced in leveraging internal Assets & Liabilities structure/management and product skills to drive productivity and revenue across diverse platforms. Optimize internal assets and liabilities to deliver maximum client return/value. 

 

Graeme Farrell is a Managing Director and Chief Operational Risk Officer at AQR Capital Management, a global investment management firm. In this role he is responsible for designing, building and maintaining all components of the Firmwide ORM Framework. Prior to joining AQR, Graeme was the Global Head of Operational Risk Management Framework at JP Morgan Chase. Graeme has an M.A. in International Financial Analysis and a B.A. in Accounting & Law.

Michael Barton is the Director of Operational Risk Quantification and Scenario Analysis at AIG.  In his role, he leads the development and implementation of operational risk stress testing, economic capital estimation, and allocation of those estimates to the business lines, as well as supporting the development of and quantification of operational loss scenarios for the organization.  In this role, Michael has worked extensively with cyber and business professionals around identifying and quantifying cyber risk.  Before working at AIG, Michael was the Head of the Regulatory Solutions Quantification group in U.S. Bank’s Corporate Treasury department.  In this role, he was responsible for CCAR/DFAST and Regulatory Capital modeling for Operational Risk as well as setting up a governance framework for models and analytical tools in the Corporate Treasury department.  Previous to those roles, Michael worked in an actuarial capacity at Sun Life Financial in Boston handling variable annuity reserving, fixed and variable annuity lapse study estimations, and retirement product pricing.  He held a similar variable annuity reserving role in Security Benefit Corporation in Topeka, KS before that.  Michael has a Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics with an Actuarial Emphasis, and a Master’s Degree in Theology.

Joe Iraci is a Managing Director at TD Ameritrade where he heads the Financial Risk Management team. Prior to this position he headed the Financial Markets Services Group, and the Corporate Risk team. Prior to joining TD Ameritrade Joe held several senior risk management positions within Fidelity Investments at both Fidelity Employer Services Corporation and Fidelity Brokerage Company. Joe previously had been the Head, New Business Operations, UBS AG, and the Regional Head Americas / Deputy Global Head of Operational Risk at Deutsche bank AG, a position he assumed from heading the Business Risk Management for Deutsche Bank's Corporate Trust and Agency Services business. Prior to joining Deutsche Bank, Joe had been a Bank Examiner with the FDIC and served in the United States Marine Corps. Joe completed his undergraduate studies at St. John's University and received his MBA from New York University.

Tom Osborn is the desk editor of Risk.net’s risk management coverage. Prior to joining Risk, he reported on the futures and foreign exchange industries for Dow Jones' Financial News and the Euromoney group of publications. Tom holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of Warwick, UK.

Penny is a Managing Director and Head of Operational Risk Governance for the Americas with MUFG Union Bank, where she currently manages the Operational Risk framework, practices, regulatory responses and core programs. Operational Risk & Regulation magazine awarded Penny three awards for her contribution to the field of operational risk, including a special industry award in 2011. Penny has published widely, including authoring the chapter on Risk and Control Self Assessments for the PRMIA Operational Risk Manager Handbook.

Yonesy F. Núñez is the Group Information Security Leader for Wholesale, Wealth and Investment Management & International for Wells Fargo Enterprise Information Security.  Prior to joining Wells Fargo, Yonesy was SVP and Group Information Security Officer – Enterprise Strategy for Citi’s Corporate Center Businesses where he helped promote business objectives by aligning and utilizing information security risk management as a business differentiator throughout Citi.   He was also the Practice Leader for PwC’s Philly Metro IT Risk & Security Assurance Practice, CISO - Director of Information Security at The New School, CISO - Global Manager, IT Governance, Security, and Compliance at Pall Corporation where he introduced the first holistic global information security, IT governance, and compliance programs. 

Tanya joined Credit Suisse in January 2017 from Citi where she spent 16 years in various senior Business, Risk and Compliance roles; her most recent roles included the North America head of conduct risk and head of risk management practices for the US & Latin America International Private Banking Business. 

At Credit Suisse Tanya is the global conduct risk head focused on the continual development of the Global Conduct Risk Strategy. She is a regular speaker on Conduct Risk at the biannual risk.net training industry training forum. Tanya obtained a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University in New York, NY in May 2000 and a Bachelor of Arts in International Careers from the Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. 

Luke is Head of Analytics and Research at ORX where he leads many industry initiatives spanning Operational risk modelling and management. He is also responsible for delivery of a wide range of ORX information and benchmarking including Loss Data, ORX News and the Scenarios Program. Prior to Joining ORX Luke held a variety of positions in Banking, Technology and Academia. Dr Carrivick holds an MBA, PhD and M.A in Mathematics from Cambridge University.

Jennifer Finnerty is a Managing Director and the Operational Risk Officer for PGIM Fixed Income.  In this role, she is responsible for executing and monitoring the risk management framework, administering business governance and coordination of the SSAE16 review.  In addition to her risk management responsibilities, she oversees PGIM Fixed Income’s Vendor Governance, Business Continuation, Records Management, Information Security, Sarbanes-Oxley, and Privacy programs.  She serves as the Statutory Auditor for PGIM Fixed Income’s Japan business.  Prior to assuming her current position, Ms. Finnerty held various positions in operational risk management, Internal Audit, Fixed Income Operations and Investment Accounting.  Ms. Finnerty started her career with the Firm in 1995 in Investment Accounting. She earned a BS in Accounting from the University of Delaware.

Manan N. Rawal, EVP and Head of Model Risk Management of HNAH since September 2017.  He joined HSBC in 2008 and has held positions in client risk management, market risk, and stress testing.  Prior to joining HSBC in 2008, Mr. Rawal has held trading and asset management roles at DKR Capital, Advent Capital, Swiss Re and Deutsche Bank spanning a period from 1994 – 2007.

He has an international executive MBA (Trium – HEC Paris, NYU, and the London School of Economics), M.Sc. in Economics (London School of Economics) and a B.S. in Finance from the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania). He is also an adjunct faculty member of the New York Institute of Finance (https://www.nyif.com/).

His interests include thinking about the impact of technology / data / analytics on society, wine, traveling, and focusing on the positive.

Chris leads Milliman’s Cyber Risk Solutions (CRS). The practice offers clients innovative solutions for quantfying complex risks, including cyber, vendor, conduct and operational risk. CRS uses causal modeling integrating cognitive mapping, complexity science and Bayesian nets to quantify and aggregate risk. The solution can also be applied to cyber underwriting, accumulation risk and non-affirmative (i.e., silent cyber) risk. Lastly, CRS integrates artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to construct sentiment analysis, distinguishing “signal” from noise in order to provide clients with an emerging threat framework.

EXPERIENCE

Chris has 20+ years of broad industry experience in banking, insurance and consulting. His international experience spans work in Zurich, London, Athens, Moscow and New York. Previous employment included: UBS, Renaissance Capital, ABN Amro, Frank Russell Securities and AIG. 

Prior to joining Milliman, Chris was a Senior Manager in EY’s Enterprise Risk Services (ERS) practice serving banking and insurance clients for 8 years. 
Professional experience and subject matter advisory include:

• ERM frameworks, assessments, governance
• Operational and compliance risk
• Preparing for regulatory supervision (FRB, OCC) and conducting regulatory remediation
• Designing Integrated FP&A frameworks
• Complex project management, including leading large teams, interfacing with SMAs executive stakeholders. 
• Twenty years of experience in financial services and risk management
• Ten years of experience in fixed income
• Eight years of experience in Emerging Markets with an emphasis on Russia and Eastern Europe.

EDUCATION

• BA Foreign Language / International Affairs (FLIA), University of Puget Sound 
• MBA, International Finance, Thunderbird, School of Global Management
• FRM, Financial Risk Manager – Certified by GARP

Chris is fluent in German and Russian.
 

Nikki Covino is the Regional Head of Business Continuity for Credit Suisse (CS). In this role, she is accountable for Business Continuity for all CS offices in North and South America. In her role as part of the risk organization, she is responsible for review and challenge of all business plans for contingency and for governance of Disaster Recovery testing. In addition, she is the lead Crisis Manager for the region and has led many events over the past 12 years including hurricanes, earthquakes, blackouts, fires and IT outages.

Prior to Credit Suisse, Nikki worked at Merrill Lynch in the FX Technology area. As part of that role, she assisted in the development of a Risk system for trade matching.

Nikki earned her bachelor's degree in Economics from University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She currently lives in Manhattan with her husband and 2 teenage daughters.

 

Chris is a member of Milliman’s Cyber Risk Solutions (CRS) practice group.  The practice delivers a portfolio of risk consulting services, such as enterprise risk design, cyber risk assessment and quantification, test and build projects, operational risk assessments, enterprise risk management (ERM) education and training, and ERM technology evaluation. The CRS practice uses diagnostic consulting strategies to understand an organization’s enterprise risk goals and challenges and then customize solutions to deliver required business results. 

EXPERIENCE

Chris has 15 years of professional experience.  His experience includes work in the banking, insurance, capital markets and card sectors helping clients assess and mitigate risk. 

Prior to joining Milliman, Chris was a Senior Manager in Accenture’s Finance and Risk Management Consulting practice, delivering work for global financial service clients.   Additionally, Chris served as an active duty Naval Officer and has multiple overseas deployments. 

Professional experience and subject matter advisory includes: 

• Cyber Security metrics and governance
• Financial Service Regulatory and Compliance initiatives
• Risk Management 
• Corporate and Risk Governance
• Surveillance 
• Financial Services operating model and cost reduction
• Regulatory remediation and responses
• Legal department risk and optimization
• Leading large cross functional projects and teams

EDUCATION

• BS Political Science, University of Wisconsin–Madison
• MBA, University of Chicago – Booth School of Business

Ken has held high-level posts in prominent multinational insurance corporations, and acted as a risk management consultant in the financial industry.  From 2014 to 2015, he served as the Chief Risk Officer (CRO) of the US and Bermuda operations of Aspen, where he developed and administered a risk management framework and headed multiple global functions, including the operational risk department. 

From 1988 to 2014 he held a variety of positions at AIG, ultimately serving as CRO of the Casualty and Global Risk Solutions divisions.  Ken holds a B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Dayton, as well as numerous professional designations, including:  Professional Risk Manager (PRM), Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU), Associate in Risk Management (ARM), and Associate in Surplus Lines Insurance (ASLI). 

Ken has also been an active volunteer for PRMIA, holding the following positions: Member of the Board of Directors, Treasurer, Chair of the Finance Committee, Chair of the Ethics Committee and Regional Director of the New York Chapter.
 

 

Formerly the Global Head of Telco and High Tech practice at a niche global consulting firm, Marcus has 15 years of experience with major launch transition projects including EE (the UK’s largest Telco) and the first UK 4G Services.

 

Steve Bishop is responsible for developing and implementing the strategy for risk information activities within the ORX, the world’s largest operational risk association. He also leads the ORX insurance service, including managing the global insurance loss data service, and running working groups and events specifically tailored for insurance firms. Risk information includes responsibility for ORX Scenarios – a service that supports organisations with effective scenario development; data standards; developing the ORX Reference Taxonomy; the ORX quality assurance framework (governing loss data services); and the development of ORX services to support the management of material risks, for example the ORX Cyber service that Steve and his team are in the process of launching. Steve has been at ORX for three and a half years and prior to joining held a number of risk management positions in both banking and insurance.  

Tripp has been at U.S. Bank for 6 years and serves as a Director of Operational Risk Frameworks within the Risk Management and Compliance organization.  He has responsibilities for operational risk framework oversight including RCSA, internal controls, quality assurance, taxonomies and issue management.  Prior to joining U.S. Bank, Mr. Rex served in various capacities at Bank of America and Accenture. 

Ann has over 20 years of experience in financial services in various roles within accounting and risk management. Ann is currently the Head of Operational Risk and ERM at Investors Bank. She is responsible the Enterprise and Operational risk framework for the bank. Additionally, Ann oversees, Third Party risk management, Model Risk and BCP for the bank. Prior to joining Investors Bank, Ann spent 19 years at Nomura Holding Americas in various risk management roles. Ann has Bachelors of Science in Accountancy from Villanova University.

Evan's background is in the measurement and quantification of credit risk and operational risk.  His primary focus is currently on supporting institutions in building operational risk modeling for stress testing, developing their risk identification process and developing their model risk management frameworks.
Some of his recent client engagements include:
For a foreign global bank, helped them develop a comprehensive operational risk framework for their US based IHC. Ensured both integration of the framework in their international framework as well as US regulatory compliance.
For a large internationally active US bank: supported major change of course in CCAR operational risk stress estimates a few months prior to submission in reaction to regulatory guidance.
For a large regional bank: built their CCAR loss projection model and wrote the documentation for the full CCAR operational risk submission.
For a global bank conducted a validation of their operational risk modeling framework for CCAR
  Prior to joining Oliver Wyman, Evan was the Head of Risk Consulting for Financial Institutions for Aon in Columbia, Maryland. He was in charge of building Aon's risk consulting practice for financial institutions and managed multiple teams based in North America and Europe to deliver services to clients worldwide. Previously, Evan was an Assistant Vice President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, where he created the center of excellence for operational risk which served the System needs for operational risk related matters. The team was in charge of the supervision of all AMA and CCAR banks in the US and developed the Fed's CCAR model for operational risk.
Evan earned a B.A. and M.A. in Economics from the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. He received an additional M.A. as well as his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Dan Harms serves as a Third-Party Risk Consulting Manager for OneTrust Vendorpedia – a purpose-built software designed to operationalize third-party risk management. In his role, Harms advises companies throughout their third-party risk management implementations to help meet requirements relating to relevant standards, frameworks, and laws (e.g. ISO, NIST, SIG, GDPR and CCPA). Harms works with clients to centralize their third-party information across business units, assess risks and performance, and monitor threats throughout the entire third-party relationship, from onboarding to offboarding.

 

As the leader of the RSA Risk Transformation Office, Mark Hofberg works with financial services clients to assist in enabling their Integrated Risk Management strategies, best practices and frameworks. He brings deep financial services experience, audit and risk management skills to his role with RSA Archer, having previously served as senior vice president with a large financial institution.  He holds a patent for a GRC software selection method he developed and has another patent pending for process risk prioritization.

Nita Gooding joined Ally Financial in March 2009 and is currently the Executive Director of Ally’s Risk Strategic Programs team.   In this role, Ms. Gooding is responsible for overseeing the successful execution of critical Independent Risk Management initiatives, including both process improvement projects and large-scale transformational efforts involving people, process, and technology change. Ms. Gooding is also responsible for managing key risk engagement forums to drive knowledge exchange, consistency, and continuous improvement across business line risk executives and independent risk management functions.  In addition to these responsibilities, Ms. Gooding provides the ongoing governance of Ally’s Governance, Risk, and Compliance platform.

Prior to joining Ally, Ms. Gooding was a Change Management Executive at Bank of America for 14 years, and a Senior Management Consultant with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) for 5 years.

Alex Shulman-Peleg, PhD, is leading Cloud Cybersecurity Consulting services in the Americas. She is supporting multiple clients in their secure enablement of public clouds and container technologies, addressing all of the involved cybersecurity and regulatory requirements. In her previous role, she was a director of cloud security at Citibank, where she has established and led a CISO cloud security program, as well as cloud-native security engineering. In her role, she was responsible for the cloud and container security solutions, processes and architectures, delivering protection, detection and auto-remediation in public and private clouds.  She has over 20 years of technological leadership, 12 of which focus specifically on Cloud security. She holds PhD, MSc and BSc degrees in Computer Science from Tel-Aviv University. She has multiple patents and more than 30 scientific publications having thousands of citations.

Nedim Baruh leads the Operational Risk Capital and Analytics function at J.P. Morgan Chase ("JPMC") and is responsible for the Operational Risk Capital and Stress Testing processes.

Most recently, Nedim has been leading JPMC's effort to enhance its Scenario Analysis program by developing factor based models to assess its material risks. This work will help JPMC bridge the gap between operational risk measurement and management.

Prior to joining JPMC, Nedim was part of the Algorithmics Operational Risk advisory function and led many client engagements in the operational risk space.

Nedim has a B.S. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Jay Limburn MBCS CITP, is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and Director of Product Management at IBM. Working within the IBM Data and AI organization, Jay is responsible for driving the business and technical strategy for IBM’s data governance, cataloging, quality, privacy, MDM and metadata capabilities with a focus on enabling IBM’s clients to turbocharge their use of data science, AI and self service analytics. Jay is an experienced product manager with a focus on building excellent products that delight his customers. Jay is an expert in the fields of Data Governance, Data Management, Data Science, Data Quality and MDM and has worked with some of IBM’s largest clients to define and develop industry leading and innovative solutions. As an IBM Master Inventor Jay holds 17 patents in areas such as machine learning, mobile device interaction and application generation. 

With a background in Banking as well as the Regulatory and Intelligence communities Kevin provides cybersecurity services to the financial sector and is responsible for developing EY’s Cyber Metrics for Boards and CISO Dashboard offerings. 

Steve is EY’s Financial Services  (FSO) Cyber Security and Privacy Leader for the Americas. Steve brings more than 30 years of experience in Consulting, Banking, Cyber and FinCrime.

Shari Hope is a Risk Project Manager at Varo Bank, where she is responsible for managing the roadmap and implementation of the governance, risk and compliance (GRC) tool and managing the overall portfolio of projects in the risk management department.  Shari has over 15 years of experience managing technology infrastructure for risk.

Prior to her current role, Shari worked at Morgan Stanley working on program execution across risk technology and information security.  Technology implementations Shari was responsible for include building out a library of business processes, risks and controls, issue management, risk assessment, control testing, access management, CCAR, stress testing, and market risk infrastructure.  Shari earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from Binghamton University and an MBA from New York University.  

Kevin Greenfield is the Deputy Comptroller for Operational Risk at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).

In this role, Mr. Greenfield oversees development of policy and examination procedures addressing operational risk, bank information technology, cybersecurity, critical infrastructure resilience, payments systems, and corporate and risk governance. He assumed these responsibilities in November 2019.

Prior to this role, Mr. Greenfield served as the Director for Bank Information Technology for the Operational Risk Division where he managed a team responsible for developing, communicating, and interpreting policies for the OCC's supervision of technology operations at financial institutions. He represented the OCC on several interagency groups that focus on coordination and development of information technology risk management supervisory guidance for such topics as information security, resiliency, technology operations, corporate governance, and independent risk management.

Prior to being named Director for Bank Information Technology in 2014, Mr. Greenfield spent 14 years with the OCC's Large Bank Supervision Department, where he gained experience examining large and complex technology operations at several of the largest U.S. financial institutions. In this role, he held various technology supervision roles at large financial institutions based in Pittsburgh, Charlotte, and New York City.

Mr. Greenfield is a graduate of the University of Dayton and holds the Certified Information Systems Auditor professional certification.

Lester Joseph is the Manager of the Global Financial Crimes Intelligence Group at Wells Fargo & Company. The primary mission of this Group is to provide intelligence on money laundering activity and financial crime trends to all parts of the company. Les joined Wells Fargo in March 2010 as the International Investigations Manager.

Prior to joining Wells Fargo, Les worked for the U.S. Department of Justice from 1984 to February 2010. From 2002-2010, he was the Principal Deputy Chief of the Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section (AFMLS). He was a Deputy Chief in the Section since October 1991.

Les began his career with the Department of Justice in 1984 as a Trial Attorney in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section. From 1981-1984, he was an Assistant State's Attorney in Cook County (Chicago), Illinois. He received his J.D. from The John Marshall Law School in Chicago and his B.A. from the University of Michigan.

 

As Director of RegTech Offerings within IBM’s Cloud and Cognitive division, Heather is responsible for product strategy of IBM’s GRC and financial crimes portfolio. During the past 18 years, she has specialized in developing solutions to optimize regulatory compliance initiatives and the need for automation, AI and cognitive in support of risk and compliance programs and financial crimes monitoring. Prior to joining IBM, Heather was responsible for overseeing the compliance analytics division of regulatory solutions at Wolters Kluwer.

Jason is responsible for the firm's London Inter-bank Offered Rate (LIBOR) transition efforts. Previously, he was deputy head of Liquidity Solutions for Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM). From 2010 to 2017, Jason was the head of International Liquidity Portfolio Management for GSAM, responsible for the management of international liquidity portfolios. From 2007 to 2010, he was co-head of the Secured Funding team on the Central Funding desk, where he and his team were responsible for all financing transactions and financing counterparty relationships across the Investment Management Division. Prior to that, Jason worked in the portfolio and risk strategy group of GSAM’s Fixed Income team from 2004 to 2007. Before joining GSAM, he was an analyst in Fixed Income Operations. Jason joined Goldman Sachs in 2000 and was named managing director in 2012. Jason was recognized by Financial News as one of the “FN 40 Under 40 Rising Stars of Asset Management” in 2013 and 2014. Jason serves on the Board of Trustees of Fairy Bricks. Jason earned a BA in Economics from the University of Michigan in 2000.

Sairah Burki is Managing Director, Regulatory Policy at CREFC, where she focuses on regulatory issues with a significant impact on the commercial and multifamily real estate finance industry.  

Prior to joining CREFC, Sairah was a Managing Director and Head of Policy at the Structured Finance Association (SFA). Over the course of her six years at SFA, Sairah built the organization’s asset-backed policy function—developing its strategic response to new policy initiatives and regulatory requirements across a wide range of topics in the structured finance industry. Areas she covered included the Volcker Rule, risk retention, capital and liquidity requirements, Reg AB II disclosure requirements, and derivatives rulemakings. Most recently, Sairah worked extensively on the LIBOR transition, representing SFA on the Alternative Reference Rates Committee (ARRC) and co-chairing with Lisa Pendergast the ARRC’s Securitization Working Group. 

While at SFA, Sairah established and served as the first Executive Director of the Structured Finance Foundation, ensuring it fulfilled its mandate to enhance educational opportunities for underserved young people through scholarship funding.

Before joining SFA, Sairah spent seven years at Capital One where she was a Director on the securitization team, working on deal execution, feasibility studies across new trust structures, and compliance requirements. During the 2008 financial crisis, as Director of Treasury Policy, Sairah pivoted from a securitization role to one focused on developing Capital One’s response to the myriad Dodd-Frank and Basel proposals that had significant corporate finance and capital markets implications. Prior to Capital One, Sairah spent three years on the capital markets team at Xerox Corporation where she worked on unsecured issuance, ran the share repurchase program, and helped manage the derivatives portfolio.

Sairah graduated cum laude from Princeton University with a BA in Public Policy and received her MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

 

 

Brendan is co-founder and CEO of Sonrai Security a public cloud governance and security provider.  Brendan most recently served as Chairman of Twistlock, the container security pioneer, until its successful acquisition by Palo Alto Networks.  Previously, Brendan was the general manager of IBM Security which grew to be a $2B business under his leadership.  Before that he was president and CEO of Q1 Labs, a pioneer and leader in the security intelligence and analytics market.  Brendan also serves on the boards of Tausight (healthcare security) and Flashpoint (risk intelligence).

Joining Santander in January 2018, Larry is the Senior Director of the Business Controls Organization, and brings over 30 years of experience in the Finance industry. In his role, Larry provides controls oversight for the FLoD (First Line of Defense) functions, ensuring execution of a consistent and sustainable control framework across Santander Consumer.  His role also engages with other Santander US Risk and Control functions to ensure alignment to policy and corporate standards. At Santander Consumer, Larry is also the proud Texas Regional Lead for the Veterans Engagement Program, focusing on initiatives to ensure these valued citizens are recognized and supported during the transition from service.

Prior to joining Santander, Larry was with JP Morgan Chase (and predecessor organizations) for over 25 years, with his most recent role as Executive Director of the Consumer and Community Banking RRCO (Regulatory Risk and Controls Oversight) functions. He has an extensive background in regulatory risk and controls oversight, globalization strategies, customer experience initiatives, portfolio integration, project management and consumer operations.

Larry has a double major in Business and Finance, and Economics from Mount St. Mary’s University.

Larry resides in East Islip, New York, and has three children, a son-in law, and a beautiful grandson.  He and his wife Kathleen (Frost) have been married 35 years, and Kathleen is a successful Periodontist, having been in private practice for 25 years while also serving as the Pre-Doctorate Periodontics Clinic Director at SUNY Stonybrook Dental School.

While not working at SC or commuting, Larry enjoys spending time with family and grandson, and is active in the Boy Scouts of America.

Cheryl Geremia is the Global Head of Operational Risk for Morgan Stanley. She joined Morgan Stanley in 2008 as Managing Director, Global Head of Operations Risk & Control. She subsequently took on responsibility for Enterprise Operational Risk & Control which was integrated into the Operational Risk Department in early 2013 to form a single unit led by Ms. Geremia. Additionally, Ms. Geremia is a Board Member and Vice President of Morgan Stanley Services Group.
• Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, Ms. Geremia was at Deutsche Bank from 1996 to 2008. During her last two years at Deutsche Bank, she was Managing Director and Global Head of the Bank’s Reconciliation Utility. She also served as the Chief Operations Officer for Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. from 2003 - 2008.
• Ms. Geremia graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from City University of New York and earned a Masters in Finance from St. John’s University. She is a Certified Public Accountant and a Registered Finance & Operations Principal. Ms. Geremia is a Member of the Board of the Women’s Bond Club, serving as Treasurer and Finance Committee Chair.

 

 

 

Ben Desjardins is Vice President of Marketing at Archer, a leading provider of integrated risk management solutions for global enterprises. In this role, Ben guides the market-driven strategies that ensure that the Archer portfolio is addressing the most pressing needs of customers as they look to evolve their Risk Management function in conjunction with business transformation. He also leads the market and customer research efforts of Archer, spending extensive time with customers discussing how  their needs are evolving as they extend their use of technologies across all aspects of their operations.

Ben has over 20 years of experience across a wide array of risk and security technologies and disciplines, including regulatory compliance, GDPR/privacy regulations, business continuity management, Identity management, Threat/Vulnerability Management, and various risk and security domains specific to digital business. Additionally, Ben has led global go-to-market efforts across many industries including retail, Ecommerce, financial services, manufacturing, public sector and healthcare/life sciences.

Patrick has over 30 years’ experience leading risk management, operational resiliency, compliance, internal audit, third-party management, strategic planning and process improvement in both practitioner and consulting roles. He has developed a unique perspective working with analysts, partners and customers spanning many industries including financial services, healthcare, government, energy, education, and travel and hospitality. 

Patrick is a subject matter expert for RSA where he provides strategic input into the development and marketing of the Archer Suite and works with customers on best practices.

Sharon’s career spans nearly 25 years across the financial industry; from investment banking to corporate banking and asset management within front and back office with experience in multiple products. She has held positions at Standard Chartered, Barclays, RBS, Commerzbank, Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan Asset Management.

Antevorta Consultants was established in 2013 to address the evolving regulatory landscaped. Pertinent to Risk.Net’s OpRisk North American Summit, Sharon brings experience from the remediation of the UK’s high-profile mis-selling of interest rate swaps and a Tier 1 Bank’s group-wide implementation of the enterprise risk controls framework.

An active speaker at LIBOR conferences and webinars, she has an extensive knowledge of LIBOR transition risks and implementation challenges. Sharon presented at the inaugural Risk.Net LIBOR Transition training course and continues to contribute to these valuable insights.

Her consultancy’s current focus is promoting greater awareness and support for market participants to safely navigate LIBOR transition, enabling them to focus on their principle business activities.

Rick is a Senior Bank Examiner. He joined the Operational Risk Governance unit at the New York Fed in December, 2011 in the Financial Institutions Supervisory Group (FISG).

Rick began his career as a municipal finance attorney, then joined J.P. Morgan & Co., where played a variety of roles in markets and investment banking. In the late 1990s, Rick joined J.P. Morgan's original operational risk development team. There, he was responsible for framework development tasks and loss data collection and reporting systems. While at J.P. Morgan, Rick chaired the IIF subcommittee that drafted the finance industry's recommendations for Basel II event type categories, and later participated in the definition of loss data recording standards for the Operational Risk data eXchange (ORX). Before joining the Fed, Rick was an operational risk framework consultant for RiskBusiness International, designing customized taxonomic models and structured risk management programs for institutional clients.

Rick has been a writer, speaker and business school instructor on operational risk topics. He received a B.A. (Economics) and M.A. (Organizational Behavior) from Yale University, and a J.D. from University of Connecticut School of Law (Law Review, lead articles editor).

Deborah joined CLS in 2019 as Chief Risk Officer, overseeing the risk function globally. As a specialist in risk management and strengthening controls, she is responsible for CLS’s risk management framework and for building an enhanced culture of risk identification, challenge and mitigation. Deborah is also responsible for enhancing CLS’s risk dialogue across our ecosystem, with the objective of further improving systemic risk awareness and mitigation.

Deborah joined CLS from Citigroup, where she was Global Head of Operational Risk Management for the Institutional Clients Group. Prior to joining Citigroup in 2017, Deborah spent 22 years with Deutsche Bank, where she held several leadership roles including Head of Operational Risk for the Americas region and the Global Corporate Finance division and Chief Operating Officer for the Global Securitization Group. Deborah began her career in financial services as a commissioned bank examiner with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Deborah received her BBA and MBA in International Finance from Hofstra University.

As Head of Operational Risk Management for AIG Investments, Finance, Tax & Treasury, Dolores (Lori) Miller executes all elements of AIG’s operational risk framework.    Lori and her team work with AIG business heads on effective risk assessment and mitigation, and evaluate complex transactions and new products as part of AIG’s new product approval process.   Relying on her background as a fixed-income portfolio manager and trader, Lori brings a practical framework and execution experience to enhance the risk & control environment, and serves as leader in risk management for AIG.  Lori manages a global team across seven office locations, bringing together operational risk, model risk, business continuity, and technology risk management in a cohesive approach.

Lori has a BSBA in Finance and her MBA in Finance from The Ohio State University, and her CPA and CFA designations.

Jay Newberry has over thirty years of experience in risk management. 

Currently, he is engaged as Principal, Greenwich Risk Management Consulting, focused on Enterprise Risk Management and Operational Risk Management in the financial services industry.

Recently, Jay also served as an adjunct Lecturer in the Enterprise Risk Management Program at Columbia University teaching courses in Operational Risk Management, and Traditional Risk and ERM Practices.

Jay retired from Citigroup where he was responsible for the global Operational Risk Policy and Framework for identifying, assessing, monitoring, and communicating operational risk and the overall effectiveness of the control environment.

His responsibilities included standards for Risk Identification and Monitoring, spanning risk appetite, key operational risks and key indicators, and concentration risk.  He was also responsible for standards for Scenario Analysis and related stress loss forecasting processes.

In addition, Jay established and oversaw the independent verification processes for operational risk covering Basel AMA and CCAR and has facilitated a number of key global operational risk management governance committees.

Jay led U.S. regulatory relations for operational risk and partnered across Citi on global regulatory matters.

In his most recent role, he had responsibility for developing Citi’s Lessons Learned Policy and program, spanning all risk types.

Jay’s prior experience at Citi included leadership positions in developing and executing credit risk analytics, portfolio derivatives, risk capital, and credit portfolio management tools.  He began his banking career as Senior Analyst in Citi’s Corporate Finance Analysis Department where he engaged in marketing initiatives and credit approvals for the large corporate market.

Jay earned his BA degree in Economics from Middlebury College and his MBA from the Tuck School at Dartmouth.

 

Tom Osborn is the desk editor of Risk.net’s risk management coverage. Prior to joining Risk, he reported on the futures and foreign exchange industries for Dow Jones' Financial News and the Euromoney group of publications. Tom holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of Warwick, UK.

Rajeev Davé is the Americas Head of Surveillance at Barclays based in New York City. His work is focused on managing functions and compliance risks across E-Communication, Trade and Control Room activities supporting Barclays businesses across the Americas region.

Rajeev (Raj) Davé has over 20 years of Compliance, Information Security, Operational Risk and Financial/IT Audit experience. Prior to Barclays, Davé spent almost 9 years as a VP working in Compliance and Internal Audit with Goldman Sachs in the Chicago, Salt Lake City, New York and Bangalore, India offices. He also spent almost 5 years at the Bank of Montreal Group of Companies in Operational Risk and IT Audit and almost 2 years with KPMG in their Information Risk Management practice. He also practised risk management at an internet startup venture early in his career and is very interested in researching and deploying enterprise risk techniques to disruptive and emerging technology-centric organizations.

Over the course of his career, Davé has developed and delivered live risk management training to over 10,000 individuals on 5 continents. He thoroughly enjoys classroom engagement with students and is an avid believer in bringing, where applicable, real-life examples into the classroom to enhance group discussions and learning.

Davé has a B.S. in Accountancy from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, an M.S. in Information Systems Management from Loyola University in Chicago, an M.B.A. from the University Of Chicago Booth School Of Business and is a registered Certified Public Accountant in the state of Illinois (Inactive) status.

Joe Iraci is a Managing Director at TD Ameritrade where he heads the Financial Risk Management team. Prior to this position he headed the Financial Markets Services Group, and the Corporate Risk team. Prior to joining TD Ameritrade Joe held several senior risk management positions within Fidelity Investments at both Fidelity Employer Services Corporation and Fidelity Brokerage Company. Joe previously had been the Head, New Business Operations, UBS AG, and the Regional Head Americas / Deputy Global Head of Operational Risk at Deutsche bank AG, a position he assumed from heading the Business Risk Management for Deutsche Bank's Corporate Trust and Agency Services business. Prior to joining Deutsche Bank, Joe had been a Bank Examiner with the FDIC and served in the United States Marine Corps. Joe completed his undergraduate studies at St. John's University and received his MBA from New York University.

Ken Abbott is currently on the faculty at Baruch College where he teaches both undergraduate and graduate students. He also is an adjunct faculty member at Claremont Graduate University and NYU. Until May 2018, he served as Chief Risk Officer for the Americas at Barclays a position he held since 2015. Prior to that, he spent nine years at Morgan Stanley, where he served as Chief Operating Officer for all Firm Risk. He also covered Commodities, Rates, FX, Retail and Emerging Markets businesses at Morgan Stanley, and was CRO for Its buy-side activity. Mr. Abbott spent 14 years at Bankers Trust in a number of trading, research and risk management roles. He also spent over 5 years at Bank of America in several senior Market Risk Management roles. Mr. Abbott currently sits on the Boards of the New Jersey Scholars Program, the Harvard Club of New Jersey, and CGU’s Financial Engineering Program, where he has recently been appointed as a Senior Fellow. Mr. Abbott has a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Harvard University; a Master of Arts in Economics and Master of Science in Statistics and Operations Research from New York University. Mr. Abbott is an avid musician, playing clarinet, saxophone, oboe, English horn, and tuba.

Alexander Campbell is the divisional content editor for Risk.net. He was formerly the editor of Operational Risk & Regulation and news editor of Risk magazine. He is based in London.

Michael J. Abriatis serves as PNC's Chief Operational Risk Officer. His is responsible for leading the PNC Operational Risk program. This includes both defining and implementing the PNC's Operational Risk program as well performing independent risk management activities.

He previously served as Chief Operating Officer for Corporate and Institutional Banking. In this role he was responsible for building the C&IB Business Risk Office as well as client analytics, communications, sales reporting, Canada Branch oversight, continuous improvement projects, and client experience initiatives.

Abriatis joined PNC in 2003 and has held numerous positions across PNC. Previous positions include Sr. Basel Program Manager, CFO Corporate Banking, CFO Wholesale Bank (National City Bank), Sr. Sourcing Manager and Business Improvement Consultant.

Michael has an undergraduate degree from Washington & Jefferson College and a MBA from Case Western Reserve's Weatherhead School of Business.

 

Penny is a Managing Director and Head of Operational Risk Governance for the Americas with MUFG Union Bank, where she currently manages the Operational Risk framework, practices, regulatory responses and core programs. Operational Risk & Regulation magazine awarded Penny three awards for her contribution to the field of operational risk, including a special industry award in 2011. Penny has published widely, including authoring the chapter on Risk and Control Self Assessments for the PRMIA Operational Risk Manager Handbook.

Born and brought up in Mumbai India, Bala Ayyar has worked in the field of Finance & Accounting and Banking for more than thirty years. Bala holds professional accounting qualifications from both India and the United States. He has an undergraduate degree in mathematics from the University of Mumbai.

Since joining SG in 2009, he has held a range of positions. Currently, he is the Chief Data Officer, SG Americas, with responsibility for data management and governance within the Region. This function is responsible for implementing the requirements of BCBS 239, establishing sound data governance framework that meets Group needs and local supervisory expectations and creating a solid platform for the data to be leveraged for strategic business decisions. Prior to that, he headed up the Project Management Office for the SG US Transformation project. Roles before that included Head of Finance Offshoring in SG Bangalore and Deputy CFO of the Americas Region of their Corporate & Investment Bank.

Prior to joining SG, Bala was with the Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) for fourteen years in a range of positions in Toronto and New York. As Senior Vice President of the Wholesale North America Finance, he headed up the controllership function for CIBC's World Markets and Treasury & Risk Management Strategic Business Units within North America. With a total team of about 175 individuals across Toronto and New York, he was responsible for establishing a SOX-compliant industry-leading Finance control environment as well as supporting the efficient execution of business initiatives and managing the Finance related US regulatory relationships during a very demanding period. Prior to that, he also had stints as the business-line controller for the Bank's US origination businesses (Corporate Lending, Investment Banking, Merchant Banking, Structured Finance and High Yield), as well as the 2/ic to the Chief Accountant, with responsibility for consolidated financial, management and regulatory reporting at the corporate level.

Prior to CIBC, he was with the public accounting firm of KPMG for 10 years, mostly in Bahrain in the Middle East. He held a range of positions culminating in Senior Manager. Responsible for assurance and consulting engagements for offshore banks, focused on technical excellence, customer satisfaction and practice profitability. He was the Engagement Senior Manager for the region's second-largest bank and also played a key role in setting up a Treasury consulting specialization within KPMG Bahrain.
Bala Ayyar lives in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, is married with two children and enjoys long-distance running.

Flora Sah is the Chief Risk Officer for Global Risk Management at Bank of America. She is the lead risk partner and central delivery conduit, responsible for driving ownership, execution, and oversight between the technology teams and the horizontal risk functions to provide a holistic view of all risks and create robust future state strategy and implementation roadmap.

Before joining Bank of America, Flora was the executive advisory council at Gerson Lehrman Group, responsible for business advisory and technology consulting. Prior to that, Flora held multiple leadership roles at State Street Corporation, including COO of Enterprise Risk Management, Head of Risk & Regulatory Technology, and CTO & Head of Vendor Risk Management. Before joining State Street Corporation, Flora spent several years at Cambridge Technology Partners where she led consulting practices in financial services, retail, and healthcare industry.

Flora holds a M.S. in Engineering Management from Northeastern University and a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and Information Systems from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.